CHAPTER 2
Bantry Estate, Cinnabar
The run back to Bantry village was long and tedious at the best speed the skiff could manage, but Daniel found that he didn’t care. He sat, more comatose than relaxed, in the bow while Hogg held the tiller; not that much guidance was required.
“That was too bloody close,” Hogg said harshly. He didn’t need to detail what he was thinking of.
Even this close to shore on a calm day, the skiff was unsteady when they crossed the inlet through the barrier islands. Bantry’s seawall protected the houses, and the commercial fishing fleet needed the inlet to shuttle between the sea and Bantry’s processing plant.
“I wasn’t afraid at the time,” Daniel said, opening his eyes. “Now, every time I think about itthat eel’s fangs, they get another inch longer.”
“They were bloody long enough in all truth,” Hogg said. “I don’t guess you could see him, but I bloody could.”
“I didn’t get a good look till you put a spike through his brain,” Daniel agreed. “That was a nice thrust.”
“Nice as I ever made,” Hogg said, but he sounded desperate and angry rather than deservedly triumphant. “I wasn’t bloody sure I could do it.”
“I was sure,” Daniel said; which was the truth, but he’d have said it anyway. Hogg had been afraid because he had nothing to do but wait while death wriggled toward the young master.
Daniel had been busy trying to splash backward with one hand and to guess where the skiff was and where the eel was, while all the time planning how to get himself into the boat while holding the lure in the water with his left hand till the last instant. He hadn’t had time to worry about dying, though if asked he would have said it was probable. Wolf eels weren’t exactly poisonous, but their fangs were so septic with decaying flesh that the chance of surviving a bite was negligible.
Daniel looked up at the seawall as they puttered toward the Little Harbor, a niche behind a breakwater where small craft could be dragged out of the water. He had thought that Miranda might be waiting up there for him, but the only greeting was a chorus of “Hey, Squire,” from Hebney, Colfax and Riddle, who spent most of their time on the seawall drinking ale. Two of them were crippled and all three were old. They weren’t so much idlers as past the ability to work.
Miranda hadn’t known when he would be back, after all. And she couldn’t have expected an ordinary afternoon’s fishing to lead to—well, what it had.
Hogg nosed them into the Little Harbor. “Daniel!” Miranda cried, springing up from the concrete bench cast into the breakwater. She had been on the dock, not up on the seawall. “Oh, darling, I’m so glad to see you!”
“Got it,” said Hogg, grabbing a bitt to steady the skiff. He waited to tie up until Daniel had stepped out.
Daniel hugged his fiancée. He was a little embarrassed to have thought that Miranda hadn’t come to greet him—and more than a little worried because her greeting was so enthusiastic. Did she know…?
“Daniel,” Miranda said, stepping back slightly. “I invited Tom Sand to dinner tonight. If I did wrong, I apologize, but it sounded important and I didn’t know when you would be getting back.”
“Of course it’s all right,” Daniel said heartily as he wondered what was going on. “I’d better get cleaned up. I went swimming to free the lure the last time.”
Which was enough to say about the fishing trip, he decided. Miranda knew his work was dangerous, but there was no need to tell her how dangerous bad luck could make his leisure.
He gestured her ahead of him to the cast staircase. The steps were slippery, so that put him in a position to catch her if she fell; a vanishingly improbable event, but a reflexive matter of courtesy.
“That’s, ah, the builder, you mean,” he added. “Ah, and he’s coming for me, not Adele?”
The only Tom Sand Daniel knew was the major contractor who as a favor—though Daniel wasn’t sure who the favor had been to, exactly—had built the community building which Daniel had given to Bantry. Daniel had gotten on well with Sand the few times they’d met, but they were barely social acquaintances.
Sand was also the husband of Bernis Sand. Daniel knew as little as possible about Adele’s intelligence work, but he couldn’t help making that connection when heard the name.
“Yes,” Miranda said, pausing for Daniel at the top of the seawall. “I told him you were out fishing, so I don’t think he could have thought I meant Lady Mundy.”
“Another woman would have told me that I was treating her as though she were a moron,” Daniel said. “You are far too sweet to say that, even if it’s true—for which I apologize.”
He grinned and kissed her. A pair of housewives chatting on one’s doorway giggled, and a man—one of the trio on the seawall—cackled, “Give her another one, Squire! She’s too pretty to stop there!”
Miranda was tall and fair, attractive by any standard. She wasn’t beautiful at a glance, but even on first meeting she had projected an aliveness that set her apart from the conventionally lovely girls whom Daniel had dated to that moment.
Daniel waved to the idlers but avoided eye contact. He was the Squire whenever he visited Bantry, in fact though not by law. He had the respect of everyone on the estate and their due deference also—but a free citizen’s deference didn’t mean slavish kowtowing. Though Daniel was first among equals, the folk he’d grown up with were his equals as men and women.
“It was a little awkward,” Miranda said in a low voice as they walked toward the manor house. “Chloris—” the housekeeper, Widow Greene “—took the call and told me that Master Sand was calling for the Squire. I picked up the phone and said that you were fishing, but that I’d have you call back as soon as you got in. And I called him Tom, because of course we’ve been introduced.”
“Right,” said Daniel, nodding. He hadn’t seen the problem yet, but he knew there had to be one for Miranda to be agitated.
“He hadn’t planned to tell anyone but you that it was him calling,” Miranda said. “Chloris recognized his voice, and I didn’t realize that he hadn’t identified himself. He was surprised when I called him ‘Tom.’”
Daniel laughed. “Chloris has an ear for voices,” he said. “I doubt she’s heard Tom Sand speak more than half a dozen times in all her life, and that just a few words each. I certainly wasn’t expecting to hear from him.”
He looked sharply at Miranda as they reached the veranda. “Did he say what it was about?”
“He asked to come to dinner,” Miranda said, entering as Daniel held the door for her. “He said his wife wouldn’t be along. I told him that he was welcome, and that if he liked, I’d leave Bantry.”
She paused in the front room. The rambling old building was being spruced up now that Daniel was spending time at Bantry again, but the air held a cutting hint of the bleach which was being used on the mold.
“He said he wouldn’t think of putting me out, but that yes, he’d appreciate privacy with you during dinner,” she continued, holding Daniel’s eyes. “I know it wasn’t my place to invite him, but he sounded so worried and I didn’t know how to get you.”
Daniel took her hands. Miranda was as concerned as he’d ever seen her—afraid that she had interfered in his business. Throughout their relationship, she pointedly had tried at all costs to avoid that.
“Thank you, dear,” he said. “You did right. You had to make a decision and you chose the better of two options. Either was acceptable—and anyway, I wouldn’t be upset if you’d guessed wrong.”
“So it’s three for dinner, Mirandy?” Mistress Greene said, calling across the front room. Daniel and Miranda were still in the entrance hall with old paddles, fishing poles, and yard tools—some of them broken.
“Two, Chloris,” Miranda said, looking over her shoulder with a bright smile. “I’m going to check with Gwen Higgenson—” wife of the head of the fish processing plant “—to see if they’ve got room at table for me while the men talk business here.”
Mistress Greene snorted. “If she didn’t, she’d put her husband out in the shed to make room,” she said, correctly enough.
“Chloris?” Daniel said. “Hogg and I caught some sprats. Tom Sand and I will have those. But I’ve got to shower! That car of his will make it from Xenos in two hours if he pushes it.”
“I’ve laid clean clothes on the bed,” Miranda said. She caught concern in the slight tenseness at the corners of Daniel’s mouth.
“No, nothing fancy!” she protested. “Just like what you’re wearing—” RCN utilities “—only clean. And a newish pair, one that you haven’t split up the seat.”
Laughing as though he hadn’t momentarily feared that he would find his Dress Whites waiting for him in the bedroom, Daniel walked through the front room on his way to the showers at the back.
Miranda stayed beside him. “I tried to think what Adele would do.”
She grinned, but the expression had a wry tinge. “That didn’t help much,” she said, “because I realized Adele wouldn’t be out contact.”
Daniel laughed in real humor as he bent to take off his soft boots. A pair of shower shoes waited just inside the door of the large tile room. He was very lucky to have met Miranda Dorst; sorry though he was that the occasion of meeting had been the death of her brother under Daniel’s command.
“Adele isn’t a magician, love,” he said as he stripped off the utilities he’d worn fishing. The fabric dried quickly, but the many pockets were damp—and probably held weed and mud. “I grant that she seems to be one, sometimes.”
Daniel turned on one of the three showerheads. Instead of a drain, the runoff slanted down the floor and through the gap under the outer wall.
One good thing about this Tom Sand business was that Daniel was no longer thinking about the wolf eel and what hadn’t—quite—happened. He grinned.
Instead I can worry about what Mistress Sand’s husband needs to tell me in secret, and what that means for me and Adele.
Xenos on Cinnabar
The Shippers’ and Merchants’ Treasury had become Adele’s bank shortly after she had returned—returned from exile—to Xenos. It was the first time in her life that she’d had money of her own—a share of the prize money won by Lieutenant Daniel Leary for himself and his crews. Adele, much to her surprise, had been included in the share-out.
As she and Tovera came up the sidewalk, the doorman smiled and opened the bronze-grilled door with a flourish. “Very glad to see you again, Lady Mundy,” he said.
Adele hadn’t entered the bank in several years; she had no call to. Had the doorman been warned to expect her, or was his visual memory really that good?
She smiled, or at least almost smiled as she gave the doorman a nod of response. Deirdre Leary was in her different way was just as able as her brother, so both were probably true.
Adele stepped into the lobby of wood, dark, polished stone, and more bronze. She was sure that the Shippers’ and Merchants’ handled its affairs with state of the art technology, but it made a point of looking quaintly old fashioned. Comfortably old fashioned, some people would say.
For those who wanted more modern surroundings, there were other Leary enterprises to accommodate them. Adele noted the significance of the fact that Deirdre, who was the managing partner of most of those enterprises, had chosen the Shippers’ and Merchants’ as her personal headquarters.
The majority owner in all cases was almost certainly Corder Leary, the man who had wiped out the other members of Adele’s branch of the Mundy family. If Adele had looked into the matter and found proof of that ownership, she might feel that she had to do something.
She would never look. She wasn’t interested in business.
The tellers’ cages were to her right; on her left, across the lobby from them, was the manager’s office and a conference room. There was also a door in the back wall, under a painting of two men clasping hands over a table. That door opened and Deirdre Leary came out.
“Lady Mundy, a pleasure as always,” she said. “I appreciate you taking the time to see me on such short notice.”
Deirdre had dark red hair and a tightly lacquered expression. Though her features were similar to those of her younger brother, there was nothing of the friendly openness that Daniel projected.
Deirdre stepped back, saying, “Won’t you and your servant come into my office?”
“I’ll wait in the lobby,” said Tovera. Her voice was emotionless. “After all, someone might come in to rob the bank.”
“Just as you choose,” Deirdre replied, equally deadpan. She closed the door behind herself and Adele.
Adele sat on a carved wooden chair without being directed and took out her personal data unit. Whatever the purpose of this meeting, it was more than simply social.
Adele’s relationship with Daniel’s sister was equivocal. Deirdre clearly had her brother’s best interests at heart, to a greater degree than Daniel probably realized. She had done Adele herself many favors over the years that Adele had served with Daniel. That did not make Deirdre Adele’s friend; it just meant that Adele felt a degree of obligation to the other woman, which she would willingly repay if circumstances permitted it.
Deirdre was also her father’s representative in matters of business. Adele owed Corder Leary a debt also. Because of her friendship with Daniel, she wasn’t actively looking for an opportunity to pay it, but if she ever happened to come face to face with Speaker Leary, she would make every effort to shoot him twice through the eye. Daniel would understand, and Deirdre would certainly understand.
“May I ask…,” Deirdre said as she settled onto the chair behind her desk. The room’s furniture was of dark, carved wood with leather seats on the chairs and a leather pad framed by wood for the desktop. “…if you expect to be working on a major project in the next few months?”
“I do not,” said Adele. I’m waiting to die, she thought. Which of course could be said of every waking moment of her life. In context, all that mattered was that nothing she was doing at present was of the least interest to anyone else—particularly to Mistress Sand.
Because Deirdre waited instead of leaping in with a comment, Adele said, “Daniel is relaxing at Bantry. He invited me to join him, but I wasn’t raised to appreciate the delights of rural life.”
She smiled slightly.
“Fortunately, Daniel and I know one another well enough that I don’t have to pretend interest in his offer to avoid offending him. At some point—” probably very soon, judging from Daniel’s past behavior “—he will decide that he wants another command. I will expect to accompany him when he does.”
“I see,” Deirdre said. She tented her fingers before her on the black leather, then looked up to meet Adele’s gaze squarely. She said, “I’m being blackmailed over financial and political matters. I need someone to act for me in the affair. If you are willing to take on the problem, I will give you carte blanche to solve it.”
She made a dismissive gesture with her left hand and added, “And of course pay whatever fee you set.”
The fee was minor to both of them: to Deirdre because she controlled vast wealth, to Adele because she didn’t care very much about money.
“Give me the background to the situation,” Adele said quietly. She had considered the request thoroughly in her several seconds of delay. Her first impulse—as generally—had been to begin searching with her data unit.
She smiled inwardly. It would have been difficult to get the information that way, though it would have been interesting to try.
Deirdre nodded. “A Pantellarian businessman named Arnaud,” she said, “has become a member, the leading member, of the Council of Twenty which rules Pantellaria since the planet regained independence following the Treaty of Amiens.”
Adele had noticed a minuscule hesitation before Deirdre began laying out the data, but it had been no more than Adele’s pause before she decided to pursue the matter instead of walking straight out of the office, the bank, and Deirdre’s life. There had been none of the usual maundering: “This must remain secret,” or “You’ll have to swear not to say anything about this,” or other such nonsense.
Deirdre had asked for Adele’s help; Adele had asked for information which she would need to provide that help. Nobody who knew Adele would have assumed that she would accept a proposition without learning the details—for anyone except for Daniel Leary.
“At the beginning of the recent war—” between Cinnabar and the Alliance “—Arnaud owned a small repair yard,” Deirdre continued. “In the course of the war, and after Pantellaria had been annexed to the Alliance of Free Stars, Arnaud found outside investment to expand his yard and to construct ships of some size. Among the yard’s projects were five or six destroyers, which operated as elements of the Alliance Fleet in battle against the RCN.”
Deirdre grimaced and stared at her fingers again for a moment, then looked Adele in the face again. “I was the outside investor in Arnaud’s yard,” Deirdre said. “That is, Bantry Holdings made the investment.”
She smiled wryly. “It’s been quite profitable for us,” she said. “Though peace will require some adjustments.”
“I would have expected…,” Adele said carefully. “You to have worked through a series of cutouts which would make it impossible for the investment to be traced back to Bantry Holdings in a provable fashion.”
Adele shrugged. “There could be allegations,” she said, “but there are always allegations. Your enemies will believe them, your friends will pretend that they don’t.”
Deirdre made a sour face. “Under ordinary circumstances,” she said, “that would be true—though I’ll admit that when I looked at the detailed records, I found that the security arrangements weren’t as complete as I would have wished them. My primary concern, however, is that Councillor Arnaud is the party threatening me. He probably can prove our close association during the war.”
“I see,” said Adele, because she suddenly did see. “Please wait a moment.”
Deirdre had said that she was the blackmail victim, but in fact the information led to Bantry Holdings which she now managed. At the time the initial investments were made, Deirdre could not have been more than ten or twelve years old. Corder Leary himself had been in charge.
Adele felt her lips quirk into a smile. She had allowed herself to pretend that she could associate with the Leary family but not with its patriarch, Speaker Leary, who had murdered her family. Reality had just forced its way to the front, as it had been certain to do unless Adele had died before that happened.
She had two options. On reflection she found herself unwilling to cut herself off from Daniel Leary and through him the RCN, the first real family Adele had known in her life.
“All right,” Adele repeated. In for a soldi, in for a florin. “What is Arnaud asking from you?”
She brought her data unit live and began searching, starting with the Sailing Directions for Pantellaria published by Navy House. Whatever the specifics of the problem were, the more she knew about Pantellaria, the better off she would be.
“The Treaty of Amiens required that that parties—” the Republic of Cinnabar and the Alliance of Free Stars “—give up all territories captured during the course of the war,” Deirdre said. “There were balanced exceptions, but Pantellaria regained the independence it had lost eighteen years earlier.”
“Yes,” said Adele to show that she was listening. Of course. But it was a polite acknowledgment, and she had been raised to be courteous when that was possible.
“Pantellaria had six colony worlds, all of which were controlled by the Alliance during the war and which were returned to Pantellaria under the treaty,” Deirdre said. “One of them, Corcyra, declared its independence from the home world.”
Adele refined her search while she listened. Deirdre continued, “A number of Pantellarians who were closely associated with the Alliance regime fled to Corcyra. The exiles control a great deal of wealth, even after their assets on Pantellaria have been expropriated. They’ve been helping to arm the rebels, the independence movement, if you prefer. In addition, the former Alliance garrison of Corcyra was locally recruited and remained on the planet.”
Adele continued to read her holographic display. Corcyra held vast quantities of copper. The mining income was sufficient to sustain the rebellion indefinitely, unless Pantellaria was able to sustain a real blockade. That last seemed doubtful when the homeworld itself was disrupted by both the war and its recent change of government.
“Ah,” said Adele. She looked past the hologram to Deirdre and quoted, “‘The Pantellarian Council has appointed Ermann Arnaud as Commissioner Plenipotentiary of Corcyra, with full authority to return it to the beneficent control of the homeworld.’ I would say that Master Arnaud has chosen a difficult task.”
“I’m confident that he would agree with you,” Deirdre said dryly. “It affects me because whatever Arnaud’s original expectation, he is now pinning his hopes on Cinnabar intervention as a signatory of the Treaty of Amiens, returning Corcyra to Pantellaria as part of the status quo ante provisions. Our legal department informs me that Arnaud’s interpretation of the treaty language is open to question.”
Adele flicked her hand. “It doesn’t matter what lawyers say,” she snapped. “If we send troops—or ships, more likely—the Alliance will certainly respond by supporting the pro-Alliance exiles. We’ll be back in a state of full-scale war in six months, or more likely three.”
“Yes,” said Deirdre. “My research bureau said, ‘within a year,’ but I accept your assessment. Renewed war would be even worse for my interests than being accused of supporting the Alliance during the recent war, so I have decided not to comply with Arnaud’s request. Morality aside, of course.”
“Of course,” Adele said. She pursed her lips. Partly to give herself more time to analyze the options, she said, “Could you have gotten Cinnabar support for the Pantellarians?”
Deirdre spread her fingers before her. She had chunky hands; indeed, she might best be described as a chunky woman. She was no more a raving beauty than her brother was a conventionally handsome man.
Not that Deirdre’s looks mattered. From what Daniel had said, she preferred professional companionship to amateurs. Professionals cost only money, which she had in abundance.
“There are a number of hardliners in the Senate who believe we should not have made peace with the Tyrant Porra, as they call him,” Deirdre said, smiling faintly. “Senators who feel that Guarantor Porra’s behavior toward his citizens is a proper matter of concern for the Senate of the Republic of Cinnabar. And also—”
Deirdre turned her hands palms up.
“—there are hard-line or personally involved Alliance citizens who certainly are funnelling arms to the rebels. Though of course the galaxy’s awash with surplus arms following the general demobilization after the treaty.”
Adele nodded agreement. Arms dealers were rarely concerned with the political complexion of potential buyers, so long as they could pay in hard currency.
“A campaign in the streets of Xenos, protesting Alliance aggression, wouldn’t be very expensive,” Deirdre said. “Combined with discussions with individual senators—”
“Discussions” meant log rolling or simple bribery. Which Speaker Leary would conduct; and very ably, too, based on his past performance.
“—I think it might be possible, yes.”
Deirdre didn’t bother to repeat that she had already decided against the option. Adele was pleased to deal with someone who assumed that the person she was speaking to could remember a statement made a few seconds earlier.
“If this matter were publicized,” Deirdre went on, “it would ruin my chance of getting into the Senate. There’s almost no possibility that I would go to jail for treason or even be tried, however. I have always expected to enter the Senate at some point, but I can bear the disappointment.”
Adele looked at her. On the face of it, “I can bear the disappointment,” was sneeringly ironic. But behind Deirdre’s polished deadpan, Adele saw a hint that the disappointment would be real. There had been a Leary in the Senate for almost 700 years, and that, if not personal ambition, would hurt Deirdre.
Daniel would make a terrible senator. But he might feel that family honor compelled him to fill the seat that his father would vacate, upon death if not by retirement.
“How would you like to see the problem solved?” Adele said. A mechanical voice would have held more emotion.
“Any solution which doesn’t result in the ruin of the Leary Family is acceptable,” Deirdre said. “I’m aware what may be involved in giving an agent of your caliber carte blanche.”
You think you understand, Adele thought, holding Deirdre’s eyes. But perhaps she truly did. The Learys were a notably ruthless family.
“All right,” said Adele. She shut down her data unit and got to her feet.
She paused to slip the data unit into her pocket, then said, “My help will be expensive. Do you speak for the Leary Family or just for yourself?”
Deirdre cleared her throat. She remained in her chair. “I must ask,” she said, “if your price will affect the physical safety of any member of my family?”
“It will not,” said Adele with a smile as hard as the muzzle of the pistol she always carried in the left pocket of her tunic.
Deirdre stood and smiled in turn. “In that case,” she said, “I accept your proposition. If my personal resources are insufficient to meet your fee, I will commit those of the Leary family.”
She walked around the desk and offered her hand.
“On my word as a Leary,” she said.
Adele shook Deirdre’s hand. “I know what the word of a Leary is worth,” she said. She opened the door for herself and followed the waiting Tovera through the lobby.
I have a good deal of planning to do, Adele thought. But first I need to speak with Daniel.